Happy Halloweiner!

There are three phases to celebrating Halloween. The first is when you’re a kid and you are hyped about your costume and acquiring as much candy as possible to ration out over the course of the next year.

The second phase is when you’re either apathetic to the event entirely and leave a bowl out on your porch so kids don’t kick in your gutters, or you’re a party guy who dresses up as niche characters (The Big Lewbowski?) or a party girl who dresses up as a sexy version of anything (Sexy Margaret Thatcher?).

The third phase of Halloween celebration is when you have a little kid yourself who is experiencing phase I. This was Benjamin’s first Halloween and truthfully he was too young to really understand or get any of what was going on. He did (we did) dress (him) up and he was easily the cutest cowboy at the Kryzak’s Halloweiner cookout.

Dressing up babies is funny. They look cute as a button dressed up a chicken, ladybug or a dragon, but they look beat down. Kinda like squeezing your dog into an x-mas sweater. They don’t quite like, but they don’t hate it enough to pitch a fit – so they just sit there propped as you paparazzi them the entire night.

Our plan was to stay at this party and head home when everyone else went trick or treating so we could pass out candy at our house. This of course didn’t happen. So we get back to our neighborhood to find a candy swept ghost town, and there is 10lbs of candy sitting in our pantry AND now our house is where crabby Old Man Alexander lives.

We did attend a Halloween party the following night at a friend’s house and brought Cowboy Benjamin along to help amortize his $60 costume (don’t get me started). I know what you’re thinking – being at a party with a baby is probably both fun and easy. Negative. Imagine the last party you went to. Now, imagine you were cradling a 25lb dumbbell against your chest the entire time. Now imagine this weight is squirming around you trying to touch everything. Now also imagine holding a drink in your other hand, oh, and you are dressed up like a Mexican wrestler.

So Halloween will forever be changed. But I really look forward to the next couple of years taking Benjamin trick or treating, I just hope he doesn’t mind being escorted by a Luchador.

Bantha Poodoo

If you are a Star Wars fan, you know what this about - poop. I have become unphased by baby poop, yet dog mess is still #1 one on the Yuck List. Seriously, what's in dog food, manure? Moving on.

Some good friend of ours were throwing a Star Wars themed birthday party for their 4 year old son Drew. We have close ties to them and Drew so we of course attended. I even reprised my role as a Jedi in full costume to help add as much legitimacy to this party as a 30 year old dressed like space monk can do.

So Emily had an awesome idea to dress Benjamin up as a Jedi youngling. First, let me acknowledge how great it is being married to someone who not only tolerates my inner dork, but enables it to thrive. She put together a very cute ensemble that invokes what a toddler on Tatooine might look like during a moisture farm harvest. I was glowing.

We show up to the party and our friends pulled out all of the stops putting together a production that would make rival parents cringe. The sights, the sounds, the festivities - the Force was strong at this party. My role was to help lead everyone in Jedi training, each kid received their own lightsaber to learn some moves. The Master then feels a disturbance in the Force, goes to investigate while I continue tutoring these kids in lightsaber skills, out comes Darth Vader, I fight him using the moves we just learned, then all of the kids get the chance to take on the Sith Lord. Super fun.

Here comes the curveball. Benjamin got a small ear infection earlier that week, and his medicine has a small side effect - loose stool. So the party is winding down, he's having a ball sitting and playing on their living room floor (white carpet, foreshadowing). We notice that he's missing a sock, and I spy it behind him, I grab it and there is some discoloration on it - 3 guesses what it was. Yep.

There is (ahem) "discoloration" all up his back and pants and he's just bouncing up and down listening to the Max Rebo Band as Emily and I have panicked looks on our faces and sinking sensations in our stomachs. I quickly grab Benjamin, butt-up, and carry him to their 9 month olds room. Benjamin's not a huge fan of being on his stomach so he freaks out as I'm trying to limit his "discolored" clothes from touching anything.

Now to complete the mental picture for you, I am still dressed in full Jedi garb with a huge draping brown hooded robe and sleeves. I probably looked like a wizard conjuring up some black magic as I hovered over a sacrificial crying baby. I am doing everything possible to keep Benjamin from rolling over, not get poo on the robe, pull off his clothes, unearth the vile source of the situation, clean him, change him and get him to calm down. Needless to say, it was a dicey process.

And in my head I wanted to go out and explain to all of the other parents that our baby wasn't always like this and that he usually doesn't create sasquatch-like messes on people's floors. But by the time I was done, the party was over and everyone had packed up and left. Literally making us the party-poopers.

I now open it up to you to come up with the winning concluding reference that ties up the story by using some form of "the Dark Side".